Flute – Instrumental Pedagogy Essay – Part 5 – ‘The first four beginner flute lessons’
Flute – Instrumental Pedagogy Essay – Part 5 – ‘The first four beginner flute lessons’
Flute – Lesson 1
Skills introduced:
Number 1- note production, number 2- finger/hand position and number 5- care of instrument/putting it together
Also include:
Find out about the student- find out their motivation for wanting to start learning flute, hobbies, favourite subject at school, family support from home in learning an instrument. This will tell you a lot about the way the student learns, where their interests lie, and how much support there will be from home for practicing.
I will give them a small practice diary that I provide and their tutor books, ‘Abracadabra’, they mostly won’t use the tutor book just yet, but I explain how their practice diary works and what my expectations for practice are.
Flute – Lesson 2
Skills introduced:
Number 4- note/stave reading and number 6- tonguing
Also include:
Reinforcement of the concepts taught from last week. Firstly, note production- have a listen to their sound and see how it’s progressed during the week from their last lesson. They may need to blow harder or alter the position of their flute to create a better sound. I use the illustration of turning on the tap only a little bit, or lots, like a fireman’s hose, for the amount of air they’ll need to produce a good sound. Finger/hand position and care of instrument/putting it together- this is easy to do for the teacher to watch the student as they play or set up/pack up and make any alterations needed.
They will start learning the first one or two songs in the book, and through this I will introduce note/stave reading, and tonguing, only if a satisfactory sound is being produced.
Flute – Lesson 3
Skills introduced:
Number 3- breathing
Also include:
There will be a lot of reinforcement of note/stave reading in this lesson, as there’s a lot to learn for this concept. Students will vary drastically, so I will work with wherever the student is at. We will continue through the book, as the songs are set out as such that they reinforce the positions of A, B and G both on the stave and in their flute fingers. By this stage, we will need to start looking at crotchets, minims and semibreves, what they look like, and how long each of these notes sounds for.
Flute – Lesson 4
Reinforcement: of all the concepts taught so far. It will vary as to where the student is up to and what skills they’ve understood and are now doing, and which ones we will need to go over. If they can recognise B, A and G on the stave, remember where their fingers go on their flute for each note, and recognise and play a one, two and four beat note, the next step will be teaching the next note, a C, and a dotted minim, a three beat note. This would be followed by learning articulations- tonguing and slurring- which will reinforce their tonguing learnt so far.